Denver’s Archbishop-designate Samuel J. Aquila, bishop of the 90,000-member Fargo Diocese in North Dakota, said Denver is seen by American Catholics as a vibrant, evangelical faith community, in large part, he said, because of the tremendous work of its former shepherd, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput.

It’s clear from his brief introductory comments at a morning press conference at the Denver Archdiocese that Aquila will be singing from the same orthodox hymnbook as his “friends, brothers and mentors,” Chaput, now in Philadelphia, and Cardinal James Francis Stafford.

For Aquila, the fifth archbishop of the the 550,000-member Denver Archdiocese, today is a homecoming that was, he said, “a very happy occasion” and all very “overwhelming.”

He was gardening at his home in Fargo about a week ago, he said, when he received a surprising call from the pope’s U.S. representative, nuncio Archbishop Carlo Vigano. He had called back to Denver.

“It meant returning to the place I had called home for most of my life,” Aquila said. “I never imagined I would return one day as archbishop.”

Vigano made the official announcement of Aquila’s appointment at 4 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time, or noon in Rome.

Although the 61-year-old Aquila is a native of Burbank, Calif., he was ordained a priest in Denver in 1976 and served in local parish ministry for 11 years.

Aquila then held several positions in the Denver Archdiocese in education and liturgy, until 1999, when he became the founding rector of St. John Vianney Seminary.

Aquila became bishop of the Fargo Diocese on March 18, 2002, upon Bishop James Sullivan’s retirement. Aquila also provided oversight of the Diocese of Sioux Falls in 2005 until the consecration of a new bishop there.

“I fell in love with the beauty of the Dakota Plains and the thousands of wonderful people there,” he said. Yet the assignment initially had tested him and taught him obedience, he said, because nothing is more unsettling than leaving everything he had known and loved in Denver for so long.

Aquila told the crowd packed into the Cardinal Stafford Library in the John Paul II Pastoral Center that he will not shrink from bringing Catholic values to bear on U.S. policy and politics.

“I have a primary concern with the secularism of the day,” he said. “As Catholics and Christians, while we are respectful (of other perspectives), we must keep the place of God in the public square.”

Aquila spoke for about 10 minutes this morning, saying he was “entrusting this new beginning to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

He told the Post he’s visited her shrine in Mexico three times, where he was captivated by the beauty of the image she gave humanity and by her unique role in salvational history — that nothing is impossible for God if we are receptive.

He said every Catholic, and every other living person, is called to be a saint.

Aquila said he feels a strong affinity for Denver’s large Hispanic community, with which he and his Italian family and community share a tradition of “strong family life and deep devotion.”

“I have always had a deep love for the Hispanic community,” he said.

He pledged to work on his Spanish, which has grown rusty. “Something I have to work on es mi Español,” he said.

This afternoon Aquila is slated to visit Guardian Angels Catholic School, Catholic Charities’ Samaritan House homeless shelter and Centro San Juan Diego, the Hispanic pastoral center for the archdiocese.

He a will lead Mass at 5:30 p.m. in the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. After the Mass, Aquila will host a reception at St. John Vianney Seminary refectory at 7 p.m., which is open to the public.

On Wednesday, he will go to Mount Olivet Cemetery in Wheat Ridge before visiting Bishop Machebeuf High School in Denver. Aquila will then return to Fargo until shortly before his installation.

Aquila won praise from Pope Benedict XVI in March for changing the order in which his diocese’s children receive the sacraments. In the last seven years, children in the Fargo Diocese have received confirmation at a younger age, and before Holy Communion. According to the Catholic News Agency, Aquila said the order emphasizes that the Eucharist “completes the sacraments of initiation.”

Aquila has been no stranger to controversy. He was one of the harshest critics of University of Notre Dame after its president, Rev. John Jenkins, invited President Barack Obama to give the 2009 commencement address.

Aquila, according to Catholic media, released one of the strongest letters of the many Jenkins received in protest of the president’s appearance at Notre Dame.

“Even though President Obama is not Catholic, he clearly rejects the truth about human dignity through his constant support of a so-called ‘right to abortion.’ He also tolerates the inexcusable act of letting aborted children die who are born alive. He promotes an intrinsic evil which must always be resisted by a just and civil society,” Aquila wrote to Jenkins. “Your actions and that of the Board of Trustees of Notre Dame do real harm to the mission of Catholic education in this country and further splinters Catholic witness in the public square.”

In agreeing with Chaput that the proper role of government in solving the national health-care crisis is not necessarily “a national public plan,” such as Obama’s, Aquila spoke of the danger of thinking “the national government is sole instrument of the common good.”

Aquila, because of his history in Denver and rising national profile, has been one of the names most mentioned as a likely successor to Chaput since the pope named him archbishop of Philadelphia in June 2011.

Aquila has long evidenced his strong ties to Colorado. He choice for his coat of arms included three gold hills, emblematic of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, beneath an eagle, symbolic of St. John, patron of the Denver seminary.

The eagle also references his family heritage — “aquila” is the Italian word for eagle.

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